Tuesday, August 09, 2011

You Bet this is Personal, Bobby!

Jonathan Martin documents a call to civility towards Obama by Bobby Jindal in a piece at Politico.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60687.html#ixzz1URFAca1P

According to the piece, Jindal says:

"I’ve noticed that there are some folks who seem to really dislike President Obama, some who even say that they hate him. That is an ignorant way to think about the President of the United States.

Hating President Obama is foolish….but defeating President Obama is crucial.

You will recall that many of the leftists in this country spent 8 years hating President Bush. They would go to incredible lengths to put their ignorance on display for all to see with shrill, absurd, and nasty rhetoric. We must not mimic their shallow approach.

I have no doubt that President Obama loves this country, I have no doubt that he spends every day trying to make things better, and I have no doubt that President Obama wants the best for this country.

I also have no doubt that what President Obama thinks is best for this country is in reality a complete disaster."

End quote.

This sounds good, but Jindal is dead wrong - and proves he is not ready to take center stage in modern American politics.

Let me ask Mr. Jindal one question; why did the Democrats hate George W. Bush? Bush was a compromiser, a man who was good at getting along. He was quite popular personally - at least at first. Yet he was maligned by the political opposition, demonized by them. If this is such a terrible strategy, why did they do it?

Because IT WORKED! The endless smear soured the American public, but not against the Democrats but against Bush. It worked because the uninvolved didn't think about the details, merely absorbed the endless drumbeat of negativism coming from the Left. The opponenets of Bush were legion, and there was no way to personalize them.

Remember Saul Alinsky rule #13. http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/communism/alinsky.htm Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and 'frozen.'...

"...any target can always say, 'Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?' When your 'freeze the target,' you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments.... Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the 'others' come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target...'

"One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other." (pps.127-134)

and

11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside... every positive has its negative."

Also:

10. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign."

So first Cheney then Bush were targeted, frozen, personalized, and polarized. The negatives were pushed hard and deep enough to break through on the counterside. Support for Bush melted away like an ice cube on a hot day. Each election saw the Republicans lose ground until they lost the House of Representatives, giving the Democrats the ability to explode spending. By the election of '08 the GOP lost total control of any branch of government.

I guess Bobby didn't realize that the Democrat's "Bush derangement syndrome" worked as planned.

I understand; we don't want to turn into THEM, become Macchiavellians with no moral compass. But then, too, Neville Chamberlain didn't want to turn into Hitler and look how that worked out. Sometimes taking the high ground guarantees a nosebleed.

But it's not an either/or proposition; we needn't be liars or ruthless to fight. We need but tell the truth; it is damning enough.

In our case Alinsky rule 13 part 3 is in fact in order "one acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other". This is quite literally true in this case; our side is desperate to save a country that many on the other side actually hope to collapse (it's called the Cloward Piven strategy http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/theclowardpivenstrategypoe.html) and which others on their side care about so little that they will play to those who want the collapse to advance their political power. There are very, very few people on Obama's side who are acting out of conscience in this. We actually have a moral duty to recognize that this is a war, not just a political contest, and that it is a war of good versus evil. Obama may actually be the only one of his side to believe what he is doing is right, or he may be as great a scoundrel as the rest. It is immaterial; he champions evil as surely as Rudolf Hess, and must be fought. Or Mussolini; it is agreed that Mussolini was not actually evil, but his actions advanced evil throughout the world. Without Mussolini you would never have had Hitler. Mussolini had to be stopped along with Hitler.

But to tell the truth is, to the Left and their lapdogs in the media, a smear, just as a smear against Bush was to tell the truth in their minds. Remember, these are relativists; truth is what the party says. Lying about our side is acceptable because our side is evil in their minds, and social change justifies every action.

Consider these quotes from Alinsky's book;

"The end is what you want, the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. ... The real arena is corrupt and bloody." p.24

"The means-and-ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves as to their real political position. In fact, they are passive — but real — allies of the Haves…. The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means... The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be...." pp.25-26

"The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means...." p.29

And so lying about us is perfectly acceptable. We deserve it because we are evil. We are evil because we oppose them. We oppose them because we are evil. Case closed.

And anything we say is a lie, no matter how accurate, because we are evil. This is THEIR logic. Remember, Barack Obama was a community organizer, a man dedicated to such principles. So too were many of his Administration.

Does Bobby Jindal really believe this is something that can be opposed with a reasonable tone?

Alinsky dedicated Rules for Radicals to Lucifer, after all; does one try debate the Prince of Darkness?
There is a reason why participants are instructed not to converse with demons during an exorcism. The same reasons apply here. We may want a policy debate, but they will want to attack our motives, our character, our very being. They will win in the minds of many. They will not fight fair. We will get slaughtered.

I have often refered to Bush's political technique as "duck and cover", and that applied to the GOP strategy even before Bush came into power; Newt Gingrich advocated that in the off-year elections of 1998, with his arguing that the party out of power historically picks up seats so the GOP should lay low, avoid being mischaracterized. It was disasterous, with the Democrats actually winning more seats in Congress. Duck and cover. It cannot work because the opposition will not rest, and if one does not defend onesself nobody else will. It makes you look cowardly, as if you thought you didn't deserve to win. A refusal to fight leads to defeat. Ask any child who has been bullied; he doubtlessly sought to take the higher ground, and ended up with the aforementioned nosebleed. Jindal obviously does not advocate duck and cover, but he is de-facto arguing for it. If we refuse to engage Obama on a personal level, we will lose.

And Obama deserves to be engaged on a personal level; wrecking my country to advance his pseudo-intellectual neo-Marxist worldview and aggrandize himself IS personal. Cravenly going around the world apologizing for the U.S., humiliating the nation IS personal. Stealing my money, and the money of the next generation IS personal. Imposing endless regulations in a fashion the Russian Tsar could only fantasize about IS personal. This man has personally declared war on me, my family, my community, my country.

"Don't take this personally? It IS personal!"

And it was the Tea Party that put the GOP back in charge of the House of Representatives, and THEY are taking it personal. One doesn't take such a thing any other way. Were a brigand to break into your home, steal your possessions, destroy things, and kidnap your wife, would you not take it personally? Well, this Administration has stolen our possessions (through regulation and taxation), destroyed our national credit , our military power, our standing in the world, and has kidnapped our very bodies with imposed health care. How can we not take that personally?

And even if none of this were true, only passion will win in the end. In any war the victors are almost always the more determined. The Progressive Left are determined to transform America into their dream, that same dream held by the angel Saul Alinsky so admired. Rebellion, destruction, rebirth in a twisted, deformed shape. Lucifer and the fallen angels are said to be hideous, because they deformed themselves into things of horror. Liberalism is an attempt by rebels to deform Mankind in like manner. It must be rejected. It cannot be debated with, it cannot be compromised with, it must be fought. Barack Obama has chosen to be a leader of this movement. He must be seen for what he is.